Seed stock gathering and garlic planning

Ok, so I'm not at Growbox Hill right now.. I'm back in my hometown visiting family. That does not mean I'm not thinking about seeds!

I brought my entire seedstock with me, and made sure I had them all cataloged correctly.. And wow, we have hit 280 seeds in the collection!! My goal for this year was to hit 250, but now I think I'm going to go for 300 before the close of the year :) And that shouldn't be difficult, I've set up trades for 19 kinds of seeds that I will be shipping out as soon as I get home. And today I get to go on a garden raid up by my brother... Hmmm, maybe I'll end up hitting 350 before the end of the year :)

Anywho, I went to the Kenosha Harbor Market yesterday- a farmers market. It was rather nice, I probably would have spent more money if I were at home to take care of all the lovely produce properly, lol. But I did pick up a couple of sugar cube cantaloupes- little sweet things, but alas, after looking it up, apparently they have non-viable seed due to them being a hybrid of that sort. Well, I found it out after I already scooped out the seeds for saving, so perhaps I will try them out anyway and see if they are non-viable because of sterile flowers or non true growing.
Also picked up three kinds of garlic, two from one seller, one from another. I was slightly disappointed, because I thought I was picking up 2 heads each of a softneck and a hardneck from the one seller, but it ends up I got 1 softneck and 3 hardneck, ah well. Also unfortunate, because the guy didn't even know that there are different kinds of garlic beyond soft and hard, he was just a seller of produce, and all he could tell me was the stuff came from Kankakee, Il.
So...

Kankakee softneck: 7 large outer cloves, 3 medium and 1 large inner cloves, and one medium center clove. The skins were very papery and easy to peel
Kankakee hardneck:
clove 1- 6 huge cloves ringing the stem
clove 2- 1 large, 7 huge loves around the stem
clove 3- 1 large, 6 huge cloves around the stem
all three cloves had easy to peel skins with a light purple striping.
The Kankakee garlic had necks cut to the quick, so no telling what the scapes were like.
The other garlic was actually grown by the seller, who called it Pearl Porcelain. And of course I can't find information about that particular name- it isn't pearl garlic, and not Mother of Pearl, which is a silverskin softneck. This really is a hardneck. Also confusing is that it did have long scapes sans heads on them, but they weren't wavy snakelike the way porcelains are supposed to be. They were super straight scapes for the length of them. All three heads had 4 huge cloves each with some delicate purple striping on the skins.

So now I have more garlic to put into the first raised bed, perhaps I'll end up filling that bed with just garlic after all. And it's kind of nice to have gotten together a decent variety of garlics to try out :) 9 varieties, and with what I got I will be able to fill that 3x6' bed perfectly- I already drew up the chart for it, lol.

Got over to my brothers house and gathered several seed heads and dug up some lovely ground cover- all for deeper shade areas. And I got a chocolate iris to boot!!

I'm gonna post this now because I will be getting home soon, and I will get everything sorted out and catch up on the yard and post again later :)